HTC Hero - The iPhone Killer

It’s here, and it is exactly what people were suspecting. World, meet the true iPhone killer!

Before we get started, it is worth mentioning that I am an iPhone owner and I love the device. But HTC Hero is a device that cannot be ignored.

So, this is the HTC Hero, a new device that has so much going for it that as a mobile platform all of its early moves are in the right bleeding edge directions. For example:

• It uses the new(ish) Google mobile operating system, Android.
  That’s right… it isn’t Apple, it isn’t Palm, it isn’t Windows Mobile and it isn’t Blackberry. It is a mobile operating system built buy the same folks who are currently taking over the web! Probably going to be a mobile OS killer.
  
• It uses multitouch.
  If you don’t know what multitouch is, then go get your hands on an iPhone. The geniuses over at Apple created (to the best of my knowledge) the concept where you can pinch or push the mobile device screen with two (or more) fingers to zoom in or out, rotate something, or drag a number of items. From what I have heard I am not certain that the HTC Hero can do all of the multitouch stuff that the iPhone can do, but the fact is that most apps out there are currently only using multitouch in two-finger mode so HTC Hero will seem comparable. Not killer, but if people implement more than two finger multitouch apps, it gets killer fast.
• It implements the Adobe Flashlite Player.
  This means Adobe player 9 targeting ActionScript 2 at the moment. But Adobe seems committed to getting the full Flash 10 player optimized and available for a slew of mobile devices in the coming months. Flashlite is, however, a great start! At the moment Apple seems deadest on not allowing the Flash player (in any form) onto the iPhone platform. They are full of excuses while Adobe seems willing to work through anything. This could be the downfall of the iPhone. Ubber-killer move.
• It can run apps concurrently.
  At the moment the iPhone only allows certain features and apps (mostly Apple apps) to run at the same time as other apps on the device. For example, on the iPhone you can be on a call while looking through your contacts, you can listen to music while checking facebook, and you can get a push notification of a friend attempting to contact you on AIM Instant messenger while on the home screen. But, if you want to start a web search and then go start some music and head over to the check the weather forecast, and make a move in an online chess game, well, half of those apps stop if you leave their screens, which means your search is on hold until you load the browser again. Not so with the HTC Hero. It can run multiple applications all at the same time. Not just a killer move, an Ender move.

With Adobe and Google driving forward with these amazing technologies, Apple will soon find itself left behind quickly if it doesn’t get the Flash player running on the iPhone. Here is why.

At the moment if someone builds an application for the iPhone they are specifically targeting the iPhone market. And building iPhone apps means embracing a fairly Mac specific programming language, set of tools, as well as a slightly tweaked development methodology. This is a great way to build a base of dedicated developers because once they hone these skills they aren’t likely to run off and target another platform with their skills, mostly because they can’t do it.

With Flash and ActionScript, you have a completely different paradigm. If you build a flash application for the HTC Hero, you can easily port that work to run on, say, any Windows Mobile device since Flash is always installed on Windows Mobile Devices. And if you want to create a version that runs from the web, well that is simple enough because Flash was built for the web. So the Flash and ActionScript developer can market to many different devices including the HTC Hero which will provide a similar but possibly more flexible experience than the iPhone.

The one risk that exists for HTC Hero Flash Developers that does not exist for iPhone developers is the monetization scheme. Right now, if you are an iPhone developer, your application has a predefined path for sales. Basically, you have to sell your iPhone app through the Apple App Store where Apple takes its 30% cut and your app competes with 75,000 other apps in the iPhone marketplace (at the time of this writing.) To my knowledge I am not aware of an HTC Hero app store and if there is a store, does that include the sale of Flash-based applications for the HTC Hero. All of the Flash examples I have seen so far on the HTC Hero are running from the HTC Hero browser as opposed to a purchased FlashLite application that was installed to the device independent of a browser. So I have to do more research on how to make money building Flashlite applications. But it is worth knowing that Microsoft (which implements Flash player in their Mobile OS) has launched an app store and there are other app stores for android that currently already exist. So it is a matter of time before the Google Android market has a fully saleable store selling Flash apps for the device. The likely key difference between Google Android application sales and iPhone application sales would be that HTC Hero users will be able to buy apps from a number of sources (which means HTC Hero Flash Developers can sell their apps from a number of stores) while iPhone users will still only be able to buy apps from the Apple App Store.

Stuff to watch for:

Full Flash player on Android Devices. Adobe is committed to tweaking the performance of Flash Player version 10 (the current player) so this goes for any device that currently implements FlashLite on mobile devices, and could include Flash player 10 for the iPhone (Steve Jobs himself implies that while they have seen a version of the Flash player run on the iPhone they won’t release it because it doesn’t perform well enough.) Adobe seems committed to getting the full version 10 player on mobile devices.

Flash App Store likely partly partnering with if not owned by Adobe. Since the Flashlite application market is not owned by a single app sales store it wouldn’t surprise me if Adobe sees the need to help foster a Flash community-driven app store to help build more momentum for open devices like HTC Hero. This is a fairly important step in the roadmap to success.

Adobe AIR Applications adopting the Mobile Device platforms. Adobe AIR wraps web and Flash technology allowing it to act like an installable application. While this technology is fairly young, it has turned quite a few web developers into application developers. Intriguingly, Adobe AIR applications can run on Windows, Mac and now Linux. This means you write the app once and it runs (can be sold) for any of those kinds of computers. Watch for Adobe AIR for the various Mobile Platforms: Windows Mobile and Android first, more than likely, then possibly Palm and Blackberry and taking up the rear iPhone (but not likely any time too soon for Apple.)